Remember the recent trial in Chicago of the Arab grocer (Salah) who was acquitted of lending material support to Hamas. JUDY was the star witness.

For some reason, the Israeli government, the prime minister no less, gave her access to this guy when he was in custody and being interrogated by the Shin Bet for several days straight for allegedly helping the Palestinians. They even invited her to ASK QUESTIONS.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2…..-f03.shtml

The Libby case is not the only criminal proceeding in which Fitzgerald has compelled Judith Miller to testify. She took the stand last November in the trial of Muhammad Hamid Khalil Salah, suburban Chicago grocer, and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a former university professor from suburban Washington, DC, on charges that the two men had organized financial support for Hamas, the group that is currently the elected leadership of the Palestinian Authority, but classified as a terrorist organization by the US government. Coincidentally, that trial ended Thursday with a jury acquitting the two men of all terrorism charges, while finding them guilty of lesser offenses of lying to federal investigators.

This trial, which attempted to retroactively criminalize support allegedly given to Hamas in the early 1990s, deserves separate analysis. The significance of Miller’s role is that she was called as a rebuttal witness to challenge Salah’s claims that he had been tortured by the Israeli secret service Shin Bet, whose evidence was a major part of the prosecution case. Two Israeli secret policemen testified in the trial, with their faces and voices disguised.

Miller described witnessing an interrogation of Salah by Shin Bet in 1993, while she was reporting for the New York Times from Israel. He didn’t appear to be a torture victim, she said, “He was boasting. He was jaunty. There was no reason to believe that he had been subjected to that kind of treatment.”

Aside from the dubious value of this testimony—Salah was interrogated for weeks, while Miller saw him for a few minutes—there is the extraordinary fact that Miller was invited by then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shin Bet chief Yaakov Perry to sit in on a Shin Bet interrogation of a “terrorist,” and the Shin Bet agents even suggested that she could ask questions.

Under cross-examination, Miller claimed that her visit to the Shin Bet interrogation center had been approved by a Times editor. Which editor, she was asked. “I don’t recall,” she answered. “We had a lot of editors.” She admitted that the interrogation had been conducted in Arabic, which she does not speak, and that she relied on the translation of a Shin Bet interpreter. She also claimed she could not recall whether she tape-recorded any part of the session, although she had described using a tape recorder in a 1998 radio interview. Miller was asked directly, by Salah’s attorney Michael Deutsch, “Have you ever been used as a Mossad asset?” Miller said no.

Miller wrote about the interrogation of Salah in a 1993 article for the Times, although she concealed the fact that she had actually been present at the session. In a 1996 book of her reporting on the Middle East as a Times reporter, however, she recounts the incident in detail, noting the invitation to join in the formulation of questions to the suspect, and asking the self-damning question, “Where was the line between journalism and participating in an official inquiry, and, for all I knew, torture?”

Who would let a journalist into a scene like that? No one. She is an agent of Israel, probably Mossad.

Great post. Maybe she’s CIA (neocon wing), maybe she’s Mossad, maybe both, but she’s definitely an “operative” in a more specific sense than “Phoenix Woman” probably meant to imply.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/i…..cleId=3549

On the other hand, I suspect it is more likely she, like her good buddy the dual Israeli/US citizen Lewis Libby, are MOSSAD.

I doubt if Judith Miller ever had a relationship with CIA. She is far too ideological, and they totally avoid recruitment among those with a potentially conflicting agenda. But Miller did serve for a number of years as NYTimes Bureau Chief in Cairo, and one would expect she perhaps knew some of the officers, and from time to time she might have been debriefed. I can’t believe she would have had better access than what they could organize on their own terms. CIA used Journalists in the past in what were termed “denied areas” — E. Europe and Soviet Union, where Journalists had a slight bit more freedom to travel about, talk with people, attend various meetings and all than would have been the case for Diplomats and CIA Officers. But CIA also used Missionaries, Scientists, Businesspersons, Travel Agents — they had a whole host of covers.

And I rather wish people would consider a little reality — do you want a US political establishment that can’t get open information, let’s say about the immediate politics. economic conditions — of this or that country — and so depends on CIA to gather information, and provide a vetted analysis; or do you think US Policy should be made without this resource? No I am not talking about CIA covert operations here — though sometimes covert information is necessary to good analysis. And yes, there is much to condemn in covert operations (we probably only know about the ones that went bad) and in my mind, even more problems with some of the paramilitary stuff. But folk need to know that much CIA does is about information gathering and analysis. If you need an example of the kind of Product CIA normally produces, I’d suggest a reading of their AIDS in Africa analysis produced and released to the public at the end of the Clinton Administration. (It’s on the net someplace). It is a good example of the kind of analytic work they do.

So as to Judith Miller. Look at the whole body of her work, and you’ll see some of the problems. She clearly has some sort of relationship with the Likud party in Israel as well as AIPAC — part of it is access, another part is advocacy of particular lines. The agenda has shown itself since the 1980’s. I dislike recommending terrible books — but in 1988 she wrote a really terrible one, titled One by One by One. Her topic was comparative memory of the Holocaust in five countries (including the USA) and all I can say is that it is a dangerous mess, particularly if you don’t know good scholarship in this area. It was a political hit-piece of sorts which she tried to wrap in a psudo-academic style. If someone wanted to spend a year at it — a critical review of Judith’s whole body of work would be very revealing and interesting, but it might be hard to get published, and you would have to deal with attacks.

What do I know. I only have 20 years experience in investigative journalism.

(2 new posts in my blog since I saw y’all the other day!)

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/nsa/nsa.html

what the hell was a reporter doing sitting in on a torture session, and then never reporting on the torture?

Why should she let her bosses know? “Beating up an Arab” was part of her job description…

“You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover – Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program…”

God, I miss her.

Very funny!

Actually, when her book comes out (and don’t doubt for a second that someone known as a writer isn’t going to write some good fiction) I for one will read it. I don’t know why except maybe it’s for the same reason I watch a whodunnit or other suspense movie — I can’t stand walking away and not finding out what’s gonna happen next. This is a truly surreal time and her part in it is tragi-comic farcical and bizarre (sadist-writer, CIA operative or just a whore? It’s too much).